Daydreaming, the truck honk—that long, sustained bleat—had startled her, the length of her entire spine jolting in a reflexive full-body flinch. She’d thought the damn thing was going to hop up into the curb in front of her, as the boys within the truck hung out the windows, smiling at her like a pack of wild hyenas, hooting and hollering vulgarities about what they’d like to do to her, as if they had any experience in that department.
She’d gone from scared to furious in the blink of an eye, and had mentally cursed herself for having dropped her library books. Waving them off and wishing she had a sassy retort, she’d stooped to collect the novels and fiction writing how-to’s she’d been carrying from the sidewalk. That’s when Troy had appeared. Not to her aid, but up the street. He hadn’t so much as glanced her way. Just reached in the passenger’s side window where one of the boys was hanging out, and dragged the punk clear through. The kid, who had certainly been old enough to know better than to harass a young woman like he and his disrespectful friends had done, spilled out onto the sidewalk, Troy angling over him, those large hands of Troy’s balled in tight fists, clutching the scruff of his tee shirt.
The other boys jumped out of the idling truck like they were going to do something about it, but they only watched like cowards, as Troy thrust the offender he had in his clutches against the side of Angel’s Food diner, holding him by the throat and paying no mind to the diner customers on the other side of the glass who were looking on, wide-eyed and horrified and, of course, thoroughly entertained.
Truth be told, in that moment it hadn’t even occurred to Reece that the exchange she was witnessing between Troy and the young man had anything to do with her. Maybe the kids had mowed down the tattooed man’s mailbox at some point and he was having it out with them right here and now for all of Devil’s Fist to see, that had been her first guess. But when Troy had dragged the kid up the sidewalk towards her, shoved him down into a cowering hunch at Reece’s feet, and barked out the order that he apologize and mean it, Reece realized that the real law and order in this town might just be vigilante.
Had Troy looked at her once as the wincing kid had stammered out his sincerest apology?
No.
He’d kept his dark eyes trained on the nineteen-year-old boy whose parents had probably done a terrible job with. Those piercing black eyes of his had been so pointed, so intense, that Reece sensed he was itching for the kid to slip up so he’d have a reason to slam him against the side of Angel’s Food all over again.
But the kid hadn’t slipped up. And Troy promptly dragged him back to his shocked cluster of friends, tossed him at them like a bag of trash into a dumpster, and warned them never to pull a stunt like that around these parts ever again.
Had Troy glanced over his shoulder at Reece once he’d finished that warning?
No.
He hadn’t.
He’d simply turned back for the diner, swung the glass door opened, and disappeared inside to finish whatever lunch he’d been working on.
Reece would’ve thanked him, but she hadn’t gotten the chance, and it was weeks before she caught sight of him next around town. By then, she felt like too much time had passed to address what had happened on Main Street. She’d played and replayed the event in her mind over and over again, trying to analyze the muscular man’s motive for having come to her aid. And when she finally did see him next, she’d been so overcome with nervous, excited terror, that she didn’t have a prayer of walking up to him. She’d also had a wealth of feminine products in her shopping basket, and didn’t want to run the risk of announcing to him that it was her time of the month… so there was that, too.
Intimidated.
Yes, that was the best word to describe how she felt around him.
But over the years that stark sense of intimidation had been watered down with a glowing sense of intrigue. She’d learned his name, collected a few details about him, keeping her ears perked whenever she was settled in a booth in the diner or nursing a glass of white wine in Libations. He was a military man. Retired from service. The eldest of five brothers. His father, Xavier, had died in his sleep some years back, but his mother, Nikita, a regal woman with white hair who rarely came in to town, was still very much alive and well. The Quinn boys had opened a private security firm on the outskirts of town, just outside of Yellowstone, where their cluster of cabins also sat. Reece wasn’t much for driving out that way. Damned Repair, the automotive repair shop, was situated directly on the other side of Highland Highway across from Quinn Security, and to Reece, there was something so dark about those two businesses that even if she felt like going for a hike in Yellowstone, she’d avoid driving that way just to save herself from sailing through what felt like doom.
Around the time Xavier had passed away and Quinn Security opened its doors for business was when Troy started floating into the library. Reece had worked there long enough to know her way around at that point, but Troy had consistently declined her shy offers to assist him. It was only recently, in fact, that he’d begun striking up a little small talk with her here and there every time he checked out or returned one of his wartime DVD documentaries…
“Reece!” snapped Mrs. Yeats, who had sidled up to the front desk and smacked a glossy book onto the counter that would need to be returned to the children’s section.
“Pardon—”
“Would you kindly gather up the trash?” she smirked, clearly irritated that Reece hadn’t hopped to it automatically now that the library had closed its doors to the public. Before Reece could assure the older woman that she would do just that, Mrs. Yeats smirking smile turned sour, her eyes having locked on Reece’s laptop computer, the screen of which hadn’t yet gone to sleep with a screensaver. It was all too clear Reece had been working on her personal writing project during work hours. “Child, what in the Lord’s name is that?”
“Nothing,” she said in a small voice as she gently closed her computer. When Mrs. Yeats’ expectant glare didn’t let up, she groveled out a poorly crafted lie, “It’s my To Do list. For here. My end-of-day tasks. I like to jot them down. The computer here,” she stammered on with a mock-innocent shrug—she was a terrible liar—indicating the bulky desktop computer behind the front desk, “doesn’t have Word.”
“Mm-hmm,” grunted Mrs. Yeats skeptically as she eyed Reece like a sweaty piece of cheese she was debating.
Popping up, good-naturedly, Reece assured her, “I’ll get the trash now.”
But another librarian, the youngest newest addition, breezed around the corner and offered, “I’m up. I’ll take out the trash.”
Holly van Dyke was perky as the day was long. She kept her curly blonde hair clipped up with twin barrettes near her temples and her dimpled cheeks gave the impression that she was always smiling. She dressed her plump figure in knee-length skirts and pastel sweaters, and took her librarian duties very seriously. If Holly wasn’t a solid seven years Reece’s junior, Reece might like to get to know her better over drinks at the local bar, but Reece remembered being that age. Everything was boys, boys, boys and complaints about the profound lack of them here in Devil’s Fist.
“Thank you, Ms. van Dyke,” Mrs. Yeats sneered at Reece to admonish Reece for not taking initiative as she should have.
“No problem,” said Holly with a dimpled smile as she trotted off towards the ladies restroom where surely the trash was overflowing.
As Mrs. Yeats started around the front desk where the dolly cart of returned books was waiting, Reece slid her folded laptop into her tote bag, took hold of the cart handle, and began rolling it out from behind the counter.
“No dilly-dallying,” warned the head librarian.
“No, Ma’am,” Reece agreed. “Never a dilly nor a dally ‘round these parts.”
“Mm-hmm,” groaned the older woman in that skeptical, you just watch yourself, girl voice.
As Mrs. Yeats plopped herself in front of the front desk computer like a rattling bag of bones and began shut
ting the behemoth thing down, Reece briskly rolled the dolly cart down one aisle then the next, returning books as she went.
She was only vaguely aware of Holly skirting through the library with two full trash bags in either hand. All thoughts had once again returned to Troy Quinn.
***
The pull of the full moon was violent. It felt like his skin was being peeled off his muscles. Searing. Hot. His bones brittle as ice between teeth. He could feel his hair thicken, sprigs of fur slicing through follicles on the back of his aching neck, his shoulders, the length of his twisted spine.
Hunched at the far side of the dusty parking area where the bluestem grass had grown tall and unruly, he kept his eyes trained on the rear of the library, its back-entrance door.
Salivating. Crazed. He could smell her coming even before she thrust the heavy door open with her plump hip and shuffled outside into the dark, moonlit night, two gigantic trash bags in her pudgy hands.
She didn’t look up or around. She wasn’t paying attention, as she moved towards the dumpster.
That was her first mistake, one which favored him. Her second mistake was turning her back as she heaved one trash bag then the next into the dumpster.
He hadn’t fully turned. Half man, half wolf, never completely shifted when night closed in and the call of the full moon yanked him into becoming the monster he now was.
Something deep inside of him, some strained muscle or tenuous will, snapped.
He didn’t want to. He never wanted to. But feeding on a scraggly yard dog hadn’t cut it, hadn’t quenched his bloodthirst or hunger.
The plump girl who was rubbing trash stink off her pudgy hands would. Fresh meat he could sink his fangs into.
He charged out from the bluestem grass, suppressing the howl that was threatening to lurch from his throat, and lunged.
She hadn’t seen it coming. Hadn’t heard him. Until it was too late.
He sank his fangs into her tender neck, catching only the wild-eyed surprise on her terror-stricken face, as she turned. He hadn’t given her a chance to scream or sprint, and the life drained from her, blood spurting freely from her neck into his hungry mouth before she hit the pavement.
When she did, he fed, and tried not to cringe in horror at what he’d become.
He was the real devil of Devil’s Fist.
But he hadn’t chosen this.
Hadn’t asked for any of this.
He should’ve inherited the throne.
***
A stark feeling of doom swept through Reece as she rolled the dolly cart past the rear exit door of the library.
Had that been a thud?
She thought she’d heard something outside. It had been faint, but distinct, like a burlap sack filled with corn free-falling onto concrete.
Holly.
For a split second, she tried to convince herself that the sound she’d heard was only that of a trash bag landing in the wide, steel bottom of the dumpster. But it didn’t sit right.
Leaving the dolly cart at the maw of the next aisle, she crept to the door and eased her ear against it.
She heard nothing on the other side. But Holly hadn’t returned to the library, had she?
Glancing around, she sensed the younger librarian hadn’t, so why would it be so quiet outside? Wouldn’t Holly have breezed back in by now?
She pushed the heavy door open and cautiously peered out into the moonlit night. The parking lot was dim at best.
“Holly?” she called out, keeping her voice quiet.
Stepping out onto the cool pavement, the doom she’d felt swelled in her galloping chest.
She startled at the hollow sound of wolf cry. It was coming from the far west. Yellowstone perhaps. The howl grew, echoing off the canyons, and was joined by more wolves, a chorus of overlapping howls.
It gave her pause.
That’s when she spotted it.
A mound on the pavement in front of the dumpster. A heap.
“Holly!”
Reece rushed over, dropped to her knees, barely able to mentally process all the blood.
Holly was lying, limp and lifeless, her throat gouged out, her eyes open in a frozen, dead stare.
Reece nudged then shook the girl, but she knew Holly’s spirit had long since left.
Tears stung her eyes as a wave of emotion crashed over her. She cried out a horrified sob that cut through the distant howls, and soon her scream twisted into a single plea.
“Help!”
She sucked in a wet, tearful breath, looking around the darkened parking area, and screamed, “Someone, help me!”
Chapter Three
TROY
As soon as every werewolf was present and accounted for, the chorus of howls faded and all of Yellowstone grew quiet except for the wind rustling through the evergreens and the bubbling babble of a nearby creek.
In the moonglow, Troy met eyes with each member of the pack, all of whom had shifted upright into their human form from where they stood in a semi-circle before him. His brothers were behind him, along with his mother and paternal grandmother, representing what was left of the Quinn bloodline.
He kicked up dust with his boots as he took a few thoughtful paces, addressing the fifty or so werewolves who had reported to Yellowstone.
“Good evening and thank you for answering our call.”
All the Youngers were present, but he noted a handful of matured werewolves hadn’t arrived, those at home tending to their children mostly, their mates here on their behalf.
Curt Wilson, the owner-operator of Damned Repair whose howl had first alerted Troy when he’d reached his truck earlier in the heart of Devil’s Fist, marched forward, carrying a bloody burlap sack in his arms. His hardened mouth was twisted into a heartrending grimace and his steely eyes that betrayed his true age—the werewolf had walked this earth almost as long as Troy’s own father had, but to the untrained eye, looked not a day over forty-eight—misted over with furious tears, as he released the heavy sack from his arms.
It dropped with a thud at Troy’s feet, opening to reveal the dead, mangled body of one of his yard dogs, a loyal black lab who had kept Damned Repair and all its vehicles safe from trespassers for nearly a decade.
“It ain’t no coyot’ that’s done it,” Curt declared, staring daggers through Troy as if to dare him to do something about this. “No grey wolf, neither. Look at ‘im!”
Troy gave the man that much, kneeling to give the poor lab a thorough inspection as his brother, Kaleb, the second eldest of the Quinn men, stepped forward in defense of what all the Quinn clan intuited was coming.
“Curt, this’ll be dealt with,” he assured him, much to the skepticism of the entire pack.
For the past two years, the pack had been in collective doubt of Troy’s ability to lead. Their father, Xavier Quinn, had held court for centuries, keeping every werewolf safe from exposure in Devil’s Fist. He was revered as a god, then and now, despite his absence. And Troy hadn’t quite filled his shoes.
Kaleb went on to offer reassuring words, as Troy noted the gouged fang marks in the black lab’s limp neck. He agreed. This wasn’t the work of a coyote or wolf. It disturbed him.
Standing tall at 6’2” and squaring his broad shoulders to Curt, Kaleb planted his balled fists on his hips, muscular forearms exposed, the right of which, its inner stretch of skin boasting a tattoo of the Quinn clan crest—a howling wolf trapped in a thick oval—that all the Quinn boys had. “Let’s not get all riled up here, Curt.”
“What’s he gonna do about it, Kaleb?” the mechanic challenged, slapping his flopped ball cap in his hand before snugging it back onto his bald head.
Kaleb wasn’t former military like Troy, Shane, and Conor were so he was smart enough to defer to his military-trained brothers when it came to providing tactical strategies. But he was the leanest, and therefore fastest, Quinn. If word had to get out faster than a howl through the Tetons, Kaleb could shift like the snap of two fingers, and sprint off
through the wilderness in wolf form. He cut his dark eyes to Troy as if to ask if racing off through the moonlit night would be necessary.
Troy rose to his feet just as their brother, Shane stomped right up to Curt Wilson, coming chest to chest. Shane might look thirty-three, but he was far older and wiser, and worse, he’d been born angry and ready to annihilate. Mentally, he’d never fully returned from the war. He kept himself outfitted in fatigues, weapons strapped over his every limb—holstered handguns and ka-bar knives braced to his muscular legs. At six feet even, his build could pack a punch if it came to it. And Curt knew it. The man eased back even before Shane could bark out a response.
“No one knows what did it, so no one’s about to go off half-cocked.”
“No one knows what did it?” Curt challenged. “The full moons come waning in and my dog turns up mutilated. My other yard dog, Trixie’s, been hiding under the porch with her tail between her legs an’ Trixie’s never backed down in all her years, not even when a grizzly lumbers through, an’ you’re telling me we don’t know what’s done this?” Curt locked his astonished eyes on Troy then cut his gaze back to Shane and balked, “Xavier’d never be so calm about this.”
“Xavier isn’t here,” came a regal female voice from behind Troy.
That was his mother, Nikita, whose platinum-white hair was the only feature that revealed her true age. By all other accounts, she glowed with youth, and the mortals around town assumed she wasn’t a day past fifty. She was strong and ethereal, exuding feminine power. She hadn’t a masculine bone in her slender body, and for all the Quinn boys, she represented and embodied the essence that they hoped to find in their own mates. A real woman. A real werewolf. The light that glowed in their darkness.
Nikita wrapped a protective arm around her mother-in-law, Sasha, who centuries upon centuries ago had bore Xavier. Sasha was as grounded as a mighty oak tree and looked like mother earth, herself. And for reasons Troy couldn’t understand, she pressed her aged mouth into a hard line, turned out of Nikita’s warm grasp, and eased off into the darkness as though she couldn’t bear to stand among the pack for one second longer.
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